Michael Hannah

If your only/primary goal is linkage to people in SecondSite, but do not want to link them as a Witness within TMG, SecondSite can already do that with its PageLink variable. This SS code would work well with the Memo part method I mentioned above. I use this for certain purposes, and have the Person ID# show up in SecondSite as a superscript following their name, which becomes a hypertext link to that person's data. For example: John Jones[SUP:][HID:][SS:][PageLink:]123;123[:PageLink][:SS][:HID][:SUP]Hope this gives you more ideas,

Hmmm... Interesting "wish" for an enhancement, Peter. I presume you would wish for a new set of variables for the various name parts to be used in both Sentences and Memos similar to the 'R' set of variables, but which used the TMG ID number instead of a rolename? Maybe using the letter 'I' for ID, something like: [i:123], [iF:123], [iG:123], [iFS:123], [iGS:123], [iL:123], etc. Is that similar to what you would like? Might be convenient, but of course the advantage of linking as a Witness is that you can tell in that Person's Details View all the tags to which they are linked. These proposed 'I' variables might be an issue to find, just like embedded Citations are an issue to find. (And just like text for a person's name in a Memo part is an issue to find.) Still, something to think about.

I agree, John, that dealing with software problems is no fun. I have often found that upgrades of most any software program causes me problems, some more than others. And I empathize with your recent problems, you have had a difficult time. However, as Version 9.03 seems to have resolved most people's problems, I would hope it has resolved yours. If not, then I would suggest continuing to investigate your own specific system, as you have been doing, to try to discover what is unique about your configuration. Usually it has been some other program, often an automatic backup program like Dropbox or Carbonite, which is interfering with TMG by accessing TMG's files while TMG is trying to use them. Best wishes to you in hopes your problems can be resolved and you can get back to the fun of genealogy,

Good question, Peter. Yes, that will work very well also. Sometimes I use a specific Role (like your "widower" in a Death tag) and sometimes I just use a Memo part. For me it usually depends upon how frequently I am likely to use the Role as to whether I will bother to create it. As I often use it in a Death tag, and only want the widow(er)'s name, I have created a Role similar to yours. Further I like seeing the Witnessed Death tag in the survivor's Details View so I know they might remarry. I am most likely to use a Memo part for text that is likely to vary from tag to tag. But in your case of just wanting the prior husband's or wife's name, either a special role or a Memo part would work. One advantage of the Memo part is that the Marriage tag will not show up in the prior husband's or wife's Details View as a Witnessed tag, since they are not actually linked as a Witness which using a Role would do. If you do choose to define a Role to link for this purpose, you may wish to avoid any output (after their death) from that Marriage tag in the prior husband's or wife's narrative. As I sometimes use the Report Option to output memos which are not included in the sentences, I have to be sure to exclude any possible output from such a role in the Witness' narrative. What works best for me is to define such a Witness' sentence as: --(Note those are 'zeros' not 'ohs'.) That will prevent any output from this tag in that Witness' narrative regardless of Report Options. Version 9.02 will do the same thing for roles TMG has always done "except" that any variation of a Role variable now will always output based on all people assigned that role. For a good description of this one change to roles in 9.02, see Terry's article here. But that is exactly what TMG's Witness feature provides: a relational link to another person's name based on their ID number. In a case where you desire to link to only one person's name, you just need to have a unique Role to which you only link that one person, just like your widower role. Hope this gives you ideas,

Hi David, While not specified on the Download page, you can always tell what version you will get by going to the "Upgrade Center" page, which is the "Upgrade" menu option on the drop-down menu for "Support" on the main page. As Virginia says, the download will always be the latest version, and the Upgrade Center will tell you what version that is.

I have not seen this, nor recall others mentioning it. Without more details It would be hard to suggest a cause.

Hi Peter, The problem is that in the Marriage sentence there is no variable which can link to a Principal's "other" spouse. (If they had several spouses, it would be an issue of "which" other spouse.) I know of no way to do this other than by manually entering the name of the deceased "other" spouse as text for the sentence. My habit for such text is to use split memos, and reserve one of the memo parts for this specific text. For example, I have some other uses for [M1] and [M2], but might reserve [M3] for a deceased spouse of the Groom and [M4] for the deceased spouse of the Bride. So the "Female" (or Role "Bride") sentence might be: [P] married [PO] And the "Male" (or Role "Groom") sentence might be: [P] married [PO] Then all that would be needed is to enter the deceased spouse's name in the appropriate split memo part, such as: in a ceremony performed by Fred Smith, Minister of the Gospel, at 4 in the afternoon||at the home of the bride's parents||Sarah Baker||John Brown The female sentence output would look something like: "Sally Green married Harry Brown (widower of Sarah Baker), son of James Brown and Harriett Frost, in a ceremony performed by Fred Smith, Minister of the Gospel, at 4 in the afternoon on 19 Jan 1946 at the home of the bride's parents in Ferndale, Oakland County, Michigan." This might be a good example where the new ability to have Reminder text specific to a particular role probably would be useful. Hope this gives you ideas.

As has been reported elsewhere, some users were encountering errors with Version 9.02. A new Version 9.03 has been released specifically to deal with the errors reported. I suggest you uninstall, download the latest "trial" version (which is now V9.03), and reinstall.

If you use Carbonite, I believe it runs in the background to automatically backup your files for you. If Carbonite is monitoring the TMG folders, it can cause problems with TMG by accessing/checking the TMG files while TMG is running. I presume there are configuration choices to select which folders Carbonite will and will not monitor for backup. Avoid monitoring the TMG folders. Instead do backups within TMG and then copy the resulting TMG ".sqz" backup file to a different folder which is one Carbonite monitors and backs up.

Version 9.03 has been released to specifically fix this issue and one other. I recommend uninstalling the V9 you have, downloading the latest "trial" version (which is now V9.03), and installing that version. You may have to enter your unlock code again. This should fix the errors.

Since I am adopted, and there are other adoptions in my various lines, I have given considerable thought on how to record this situation in TMG. I deactivate and do not use the standard "Adoption" tag type to avoid confusion. I defined four custom tag types in the Other group for this situation: Adoptee, AdoptGive, Adopted, and AdoptLink. I also created two tag types in the Name group: Name-Adopted and Name-Birth. When much of the data, including the parents, is unknown I use the Adoptee tag type, and have the child as the Principal. The child is set to one of two roles depending on the two possible situations. If I only know the birth name and the fact of adoption and have no information from that point, I set the role to "Ward". If I only know the adopted name and the fact of adoption and have no information before that point, I set the role to "Adoptee". Adoptee Tag Type Adoptee: "[P] was adopted<[D]><[L]><[M]>" Ward: "[P] was given up for adoption<[D]><[L]><[M]>" Witness: "[W] witnessed the adoption of [P] <[D]><[L]><[M0]><[WM]>" When the parents are known, for the two separate events of disconnection from the birth parents and connection to the adopting parents I use the separate AdoptGive and Adopted tag types respectively with the parents as the Principals and the child(ren) as Witness(es). The disadvantage of the child as a Witness is that one is required to set the Preference for "Show witnessed events" to see these adoption events in the child’s Person View. As I always have that display preference set, it is not an issue for me. By having two separate tags it allows for the typical passage of time between these two events, which may even occur in separate locations. Further it decouples the two events, as either one may occur without the other. The children may be adopted as a result of being orphaned rather than due to a release of parental rights. Alternatively the parental rights may be released and the child put in an adoption home but never adopted. The child would be a Witness using the role "child" on my AdoptGive event tag type, where the birth parents are the Principals using the roles "BirthMother" as P1 and "BirthFather" as P2. The tag has any source citations and gives details of the release of parental rights using a split memo. [M1] provides adoption details, [M2] an optional comment specific to the BirthMother, and [M3] an optional comment specific to the BirthFather. Each child’s sentence uses the [M1] adoption details and its own specific optional [WM]. This allows a single AdoptGive tag to be used when multiple children are given up for adoption at the same time. It even allows for linking others using the standard Witness role with their separate witness memos to this release of parental rights. AdoptGive Tag Type BirthMother (P1): Male: "--BirthMother must be female" Female: "[P]< and [PO]> gave [RG:child] up for adoption<[M1]><[D]><[L]>.< [M2]>" BirthFather (P2): Male: "[P]< and [PO]> gave [RG:child] up for adoption<[M1]><[D]><[L]>.< [M3]>" Female: "--BirthFather must be male" child: "[W] was given up for adoption by [P]< and [PO]><[M1]><[D]><[L]>.< [WM]>" Witness: "[W] witnessed [P] <and [PO]> giving [R:child] up for adoption<[M1]><[D]><[L]>.< [WM]>" On my Adopted event tag the child would also be a Witness but using the role "adoptee", with the adopting parents as the two Principals using their role "Adoptor". I usually set the father to P1 and the mother to P2. This tag includes any citations such as court records and uses an unsplit memo for any details about the adoption. A single Adopted tag can be used when multiple children are adopted at the same time as a single event, each with their own unique [WM], regardless of whether they share birth parents, and even allows for linking others using the standard Witness role with their separate witness memos to this single adoption event. Adopted Tag Type Adoptor: "[P1] <and [P2]> adopted [R:Adoptee]<[D]><[L]><[M]>" adoptee: "[W] was adopted by [P1] <and [P2]><[D]><[L]><[M0]><[WM]>" Witness: "[W] witnessed the adoption of [R:Adoptee] by [P1] <and [P2]><[D]><[L]><[M0]><[WM]>" Assuming a name change, the child could be assigned either or both of my two custom Name-Var tag types: Name-Birth and Name-Adopted. This allows either Name-Var tag to be marked Primary, and either name to be used as appropriate in events. Name-Birth Tag Type Principal: "[PP] birth name was [N] <[M]>" Name-Adopted Tag Type Male: "Upon adoption he was named [N] <[M]>" Female: "Upon adoption she was named [N] <[M]>" Either or both Name-Var tags could be created depending upon the information available. If I only create one TMG "person" for the child I might link both sets of parents, one using the "-bio" relationship tags and the other using "-ado", and then set whichever I prefer to Primary, accepting the consequences in various reports. Sometimes it is appropriate to create two separate TMG "persons" for this single child, where each "person" has only one set of parents linked and they are Primary. In addition to their "standard" Name-Var the "other" name can be noted with the appropriate Name-Var. These two TMG "persons" are linked with the custom AdoptLink tag type, P1 as the birth "person" using the role BirthName, and P2 as the adopted "person" using the role AdoptedName. The split memo uses [M1] as an optional memo for the BirthName sentence, and [M2] a separate optional memo for the AdoptedName. AdoptLink Tag Type BirthName (P1): "[P1] was named [P2+] following adoption<[D]><[L]>.< [M1]>" AdoptedName (P2): "[P2] was named [P1+] prior to adoption<[D]><[L]>.< [M2]>" Hope this gives people ideas,

Well the accurate answer to whether you "have" to insert the new variable is "yes and no". Obviously some of these example role sentences use an 'R' variable with that rolename in that same role. (Although all of mine only use [P] and [W] variables for the Subjects.) With V9.02 changing the behavior of such variables to always return all people assigned that role, there is the "potential" for a change in output. However, there is not really a "need" to change to the variable for these specific roles. By definition of the nature of these roles I would expect that only one person would ever be assigned to that role (e.g. Teresa's FatherRaised role) in a given tag. If you review Terry's excellent article about the role changes here, there are good examples there. But to be safer, any 'R' variable in a sentence whose rolename is the same as that role should be changed to an 'S' variable if you want to ensure only the Subject is output. For example the sentence for the role FatherRaised would be safer and clearer as: [:CR:][:TAB:][S] <and [R:MotherRaised]> raised, [R:Child] born <[D]> < [L]>. <[M]>[:NP:] I will leave the changes of other such roles as an exercise for the student. Hope this gives you ideas,

Several users have been helpful in providing example projects to the developers which demonstrate this error. As I understand it, the developers are working on identifying the cause and testing possible fixes, but no word yet on when an update will be available.

You are correct. While there has been some improvement, there are many things which still do not work, or only partially work, especially "View New Content".

This is a prime example of a program which can cause nasty problems with many other running programs, especially database programs like TMG. As others have repeatedly warned, any program (like Memeo) which runs in the background and "might" look at or try to copy or otherwise touch one of the TMG files while TMG is running may cause problems. There should be some configuration of Memeo which will allow you to tell it to never look at or touch any files in your TMG directories. Instead have Memeo watch some special backup folder. Then when you finish doing some work, first run a TMG backup, but do not have TMG write that backup into any folder Memeo is monitoring. Then when the TMG backup finishes, copy that one ".sqz" file to your special Memeo folder so it will back it up to your network server at some point. Almost all users have no problems with Optimize and VFI. Lost files or other hangs such as are being reported during TMG activities have in the past been either some background program like Memeo "messing" with the files while TMG is running, some permissions issue with files/folders, or trying to have TMG write directly to folders which are not the hard disk on that system such as thumb drives or network drives. I believe one of these three issues is invariably the cause of the problems you are seeing.

What version of V8 are you running? I seem to remember that early versions had an issue with surety, but later versions of 8 and certainly v9 did have some fixes in this area. Can't guarantee that your specific problem is fixed, but like John I would suggest upgrading.

Hi Tom, I am under the impression that only Bob, or some WhollyGenes employee he has delegated, has the permissions to deal with this. I have no idea of the cause, but I agree it is annoying. For me the biggest issue is not being able to tell what I have not read. The "View New Content" option now always reports "no new content found". And viewing a specific Forum (like "The Master Genealogist v9") no longer highlights my unread topics and often does not show the latest post date or person. Only the main index of all Forums highlights an unread Forum, and then it only identifies the latest updated topic in that Forum. If two topics in the same Forum were updated, I only notice the last one updated. As Virginia has noted, one can "Follow" a topic or a Forum, and that does seem to provide notice of updates. That may be a "workaround" for now, but getting individual notices is a pain when I used to be able to simply "View New Content" and see all new content at once.

Yes, Robin, this is one of many site issues that have been reported. See the separate Forum about site issues.

When viewing the page of the list of all Forums, the information to the right of a particular Forum shows the correct topic and date of the latest posting. But after clicking on that Forum to show the topics in that Forum, that page does not show the date or person of the latest posting, nor the correct count of replies. And the Topic page itself does not show the latest posts. As an example, at least one topic has the following behavior: On the page of all Forums the last post for the most recently replied topic is shown, with 2 topics and 24 replies in that Forum. On that Forum page there are two topics, but the sum of the listed replies is 23 not 24. Further the example topic claims to have 16 replies and shows the person and date of a several days back reply. On that Topic page it claims to have 16 replies, but in addition to the original post one can count 19 replies. However, that display of 19 is not complete. The last reply is from an earlier date which does not match the correct last reply date shown in the "all Forums" page. There have been at least three more replies to this topic which did show for a while but do not currently show. Something is very wrong with the Forum.

I am moving this topic to the "Site Issues" Forum as these problems are clearly not unique to the TMG 9 topics.

In addition, I always use "View New Content" and it is not always recognizing new content.

I have also issued a "subscribe" with no results, but have not (yet) had the mail bounce.

Yes, Mike, but have you tried to post to TMG-L? I don't think RootsWeb is working enough yet to process posts. But maybe it will by the time I post this.

Hi Peter, In Step 3 of the Backup Wizard there are separate checkboxes for "Timelines" and "Backup/Restore configurations". I think "Timelines" by default is not checked even in the standard "full" backup configuration, and the "Backup/Restore configurations" is not checked if you select the standard Project (only) configuration. I am guessing that when you did the backup you did not have these two items selected/checked to be included in the backup? It will be missing whatever you did not check to be included, which could be several other things.

Hi to "another" Michael, Welcome to TMG and the Forum. You are quite right that the design of TMG has "generic" fields for the entry of the raw data in an event tag. However, the different tag types definitely are both tailored to the type of the event, and extremely customizable. I think the tailoring to an event type and the ability to customize are two of TMG's strongest features. In fact a large share of the posts on the separate TMG-L e-mail list for users are discussions about various customizations not only of the standard event tag types, but also of the creation of new tailored customized tag types. The templates may not "look" tailored, but I suggest you explore deeper some of how TMG does things, which I suspect are different that you expect. Look especially into the separate "Sentence" templates for each tag which are tailored to the event, as well as the "Roles" associated with a tag which differ by event. To get used to TMG I highly suggest a browse through "Terry's TIps" about TMG which are on-line here. I would especially recommend reviewing his short but extremely informative explanation of TMG's "Basic Concepts" which is found here. The TMG tag entry screen is intentionally very standard to enable speedy data entry of the Date, Location, Memo, and connected people. But each tag type is very different "under the covers" with what it does with this raw data. Hope this gives you ideas, and don't hesitate to ask whatever you don't understand.